Shady Rest residents leave after eviction served

Dozens of residents of the Shady Rest Mobile Home Park have been relocated following a mass eviction of all its residents.

Staci Almiger of Hill Country Family Services (HCFS) said her agency initially was contacted to supply resources and contacts to the mobile home park residents, most of whom are elderly or economically disadvantaged.

Shady Rest, off Cascade Caverns Road across from the Boerne Hollow subdivision, was home to a head count of 53 mobile homes before residents in December received a mass eviction notice from the landowners — a partnership of three individuals, according to HCFS officials — informing all residents of a Feb. 28 move-out date.

Two messages left on phone number supplied for landowners have not been returned to The Star.

Bryce Boddie, HCFS senior director of behavioral health, said the property fell into disrepair over the years.

“The property owner was not keeping it up,” Boddie said. “There were 25 failed septic systems ... overflowing, every week, some without tops, just open air.

Some Shady rest Mobile Home Park families left with only what they could carry. Toys, furniture, wood, insulation and metal scraps litter the 12-acre site.

Star photo by Jeff B. Flinn “Once the city and county got involved, though, the cost to repair or upgrade the septic and utilities was going to be huge, and the owners couldn’t get it done,” Boddie said. “The infrastructure just wasn’t there.”

Almiger said Shady Rest “has been a thorn for the city and county for 40 years.” Dissolving the park is something she said should have happened years ago.

“To have people having to live like this, in Boerne, is unfathomable,” she said. “This existed because the landlord allowed it to exist, right in our own backyard.”

HCFS case managers spent hundreds of hours working with residents to find out what they would do next. The mobile home park squalor was evident from the agency’s first trip out to lend aid.

“At first, the appeal was, ‘Can you provide them with resources,’ but we discovered very quickly, they were going to be sent to a small migrant village in San Antonio,” Almiger said.

Some of the mobile homes actually were salvageable and could be moved, but families lacked the funds to make that happen.

“They are already vulnerable families, socio-economically disadvantaged,” she said. “We all knew there was nowhere for them to go. ... we have the capacity to create the next ‘where can they go’ moment.”

“It looks like the aftermath of a terrible storm. They were basically forced to just leave so much out there,” said LaMinda Villarreal, HCFS director of social work.

Many residents did not have funding for storage facility units, or for rental homes, or even for equipment to move their belongings.

Almiger said St. Vincent de Paul, an arm of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Boerne, and Spring Creek Cares, affiliated with Spring Creek United Methodist Church, “raised about $26,000 to move ( about a dozen) trailers.

“We helped first-time renters with their lease agreements,” she said, “and then about 80 percent of the families came here (HCFS) to restock their refrigerators with fresh food.”

“The Salvation Army paid every single person’s firstmonth’s utilities, no matter where they ended up,” she added.

Not all residents responded to HCFS’s offers of assistance. “The rest of the people are on their own,” Boddie said. “Some folks moved on their own to other apartments or moved to live with relatives, or just made other arrangements.”

Almiger said escaping Shady Rest could be a blessing in disguise for the residents.

“The was the epitome of ‘slum,’” she said. “Everybody knew about it, but nobody wanted to do anything about it.”

She thanked Boerne Police Chief Steve Perez and his department.

“He (Perez) was part of the solution,” she said. “There were a few key people who played a large role in making sure families weren’t victimized more than they already had been.”

First Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church, St. Helena’s Episcopal Church and the Golfers Fore Others organization played roles in aiding families and helping with moves, rent or other necessities.

“This was not driven by the city, I want to make that crystal clear. This all came from the property owner. This has nothing to do with the city,” Almiger said, adding, “They are people, they didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”

Cleanup efforts are underway, as a track loader is on site, beginning the cleanup process.